Doyle McManus: Terrorists change ways

Last year, in the heat of his campaign,
President Obama boasted that he had put al-Qaida “on the path to defeat.” This
year, with 19 U.S. consulates and embassies closed and the State Department
issuing vague warnings against travel anywhere in the world, al-Qaida suddenly
seems resurgent and as frightening as ever.

So which is it: defeated or resurgent?

Neither, really.

Al-Qaida hasn’t gone away, but it has changed — in a way that makes it less
dangerous for Americans at home, but more dangerous for Americans who live in
the Middle East and Africa.

Once it was global, but today’s al-Qaida has gone local.

This month’s threat against Western embassies, for example, was focused on
capitals in the Middle East — especially in Yemen, where al-Qaida in the Arabian
Peninsula has been fighting to overthrow a government supported by the United
States.

Other attacks by al-Qaida franchises have had a similarly parochial focus,
from Mali and Somalia to Pakistan. Even in Libya, where a group loosely
connected to al-Qaida attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last year, the
operation appeared to stem from a local struggle for power, not a global plot
directed by the heirs of Osama bin Laden.

Outside its home territories, though, al-Qaida has failed to strike
successfully in the United States or Europe since the 2005 bombing of the London
underground — an eight-year slump.

The organization still employs the man some U.S. officials call the world’s
most dangerous terrorist, Saudi-born bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan Asiri — but
Asiri’s plots haven’t worked so far. In 2009, his underwear bomber got as far as
Detroit, but the detonator failed.

That same year, Asiri’s brother, outfitted with a similar bomb, got as far as
the palace of Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism chief — another local target — and
blew himself up, but he was the only casualty in the attack.

U.S. officials say they still consider Asiri and his innovative bombs a major
threat to aviation security. But note that this month’s alerts, based on
intercepted communications between al-Qaida leaders in Yemen and Pakistan,
didn’t focus on planes; they focused on embassies.

In that sense, al-Qaida may be returning to its roots, reprising the kind of
plots it successfully employed before Osama bin Laden escalated to spectacular
attacks in the West. Before 2001, al-Qaida’s main focus was on attacking
embassies and other outposts of foreign power in the Middle East and Africa —
operations like the attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole off Yemen in 2000 and the
bombing of U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998. According to some scholars,
bin Laden’s successor, Ayman Zawahiri, always thought it was more cost-effective
to strike U.S. embassies in the region than to attempt attacks inside the United
States.

Al-Qaida and its many outgrowths have become a different kind of problem for
the United States and its allies.

Homegrown terrorism can still occur on American soil, as it did at the Boston
marathon.

But at least for now, al-Qaida seems focused on the Western presence in its
own backyard, not on targets in the West.

The good news, to put it bluntly, is that most Americans have less to worry
about. New Yorkers no longer live in the shadow of another 9/11. American
tourists can visit London, Paris or even Bali without being any more vigilant
about suspicious packages or unaccompanied suitcases than they would be at
home.

Even the State Department’s Worldwide Travel Alert issued recently had a
slightly sheepish tone, reminding Americans of “the continued potential for
terrorist attacks,” especially in the Middle East.

But for U.S. diplomats working in embassies overseas, the new normal is a
serious problem — as much for their ability to do their work as for their
safety.

“There’s a serious case of Benghazi-phobia going on,” one government official
told me.

After terrorists attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, killing Ambassador
J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, Congress demanded tougher
security measures.

This month’s closure of embassies for more than a week was, in part, a
response. The State Department said the action was taken “out of an abundance of
caution.”

But working diplomats worry that if embassies close in response to every
threat, their work will be impossible.

“Washington makes decisions on a zero-risk basis, [but] there has been a
level of risk for years,” noted Ronald E. Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador to
Afghanistan.

Put more bluntly: If a bomb maker in Yemen can close U.S. embassies just by
making plans for his next attempt, doesn’t that mean the terrorists have
won?

Over the long run, diplomats are going to have to find new ways to work
without exposing themselves to danger, according to the State Department’s
former counterterrorism chief.

“This is the new normal,” said Daniel Benjamin, now director of the John
Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College. “We’ve
been closing embassies off and on for the last five years. ... In a lot of
places, after the Arab Spring, we can’t rely on local security services anymore.
It’s going to be very difficult to fix. But if you lose an embassy (to a
successful attack), that’s an even bigger setback.”

DOYLE MCMANUS is a columnist for the Los
Angeles Times. His column is distributed by MCT Information
Services.

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